Priests, Prophets and Scribes: Essays on the Formation and Heritage of Second Temple Judaism in Honour of Joseph Blenkinsopp.

• Author: Schwartz, Daniel R.

This volume focuses, as does much of the laureate's work, on the early Second Temple Period, the sixth to fourth centuries B.C.E., so little known but so crucial in the transition of biblical "Israel" to post-biblical "Judaism." The first of its four parts deals with the historiography of the period (Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah), addressing the relationship of history and theology. J. W. Wright focuses on their interplay in the history of the scholarship on 1 Chron. 23-27. J. R. Shaver considers why Neh. 8:9 makes Ezra and Nehemiah contemporaries although they were not. This part also deals with the period's concern with racial purity. P. R. Davies discusses this issue as it pertains to the villains of II Chron. 20:1: the Ammonites and Moabites (see also Gen. 19:30-38; Deut. 23:3). R. P. Carroll discusses the same issue as it pertains to Neh. 6:14, where a woman is involved. A study by J. C. VanderKam, asking whether Ezra and Nehemiah were indeed written by the same author as so often assumed, completes this part, which is the most unified of the four.

Part two offers five assorted studies of literary and textual questions in biblical wisdom literature, including R. N. Whybray's study of the composition of Proverbs 10-29 and J. L. Crenshaw's study of the language of prohibition in Proverbs and Qoheleth - a contribution to the general question of the relationship of wisdom to law, to which Blenkinsopp dedicated a 1983 volume. The other studies in this part deal with the structure of Psalms 25 and 34 (D. N. Freedman), some Qumran manuscripts of Ezra and Ecclesiastes (E. Ulrich), and the poem on wisdom in Baruch 3-4 (W. Harrelson).

Part three is another catch-all, assembling three studies under the rubric "Early Judaism and its Environment": M. Weinfeld's interesting comparison of Mesopotamian and rabbinic (Avot 5:21) perceptions of the various stages of life; J. P. Weinberg's study of biblical perception of "things" and their production as an index of a move away from mythological thinking; and - in a forgivable departure from the volume's chronological framework - V. Tzaferis' up-to-date survey of the pagan cults practiced at Caesarea Philippi (Banias) in the Hellenistic and Roman periods.

The fourth and final part, devoted to the theology of the Hebrew Bible, includes the most general...